Search

Over the last month we have seen many changes on Facebook. Some of these are obvious. Others are less visible. One change that happened during the last month that is important for businesses is the change to Facebook’s cover photo policy. If you have had a business page for a while you will remember when you could say just about anything in the banner space where your cover photo goes. Then Facebook implemented new policies that significantly reduced what types of things you could do with your cover images. Recently Facebook quietly loosened their policies, allowing businesses to include calls to action and web site addresses in the cover image again. They have kept the policy limiting text in the cover image to 20% of the total area, but businesses can now highlight price and purchase information; list contact information such as a website address, email, or mailing address; refer to Facebook features or actions, such as like or share, and include either text calls to action (CTAs) like “buy it now” or visual CTAs like an arrow pointing from the cover photo to the ‘Like’ button.

This is excellent news for businesses since clear CTAs significantly increase visitor/fan engagement and generate more leads.

That said, you don’t want to use this new announcement as a reason to backtrack in your creative marketing endeavours. There are ways to take advantage of the ability to use CTAs again without simply reverting to old tricks that will look like precisely what they are—used. Be creative. Use some of the new ideas and approaches you have learned by having to accomplish your goals without text CTAs.

If you do switch up your cover photo and add a CTA and/or arrow directing people to like your page, check out this great Facebook image compliance tool that will help you determine whether your CTA is less than 20% of your image area.

If you add a CTA to your cover image or use one in a specific promotion/campaign you are highlighting in your cover photo let us know if you gain more leads as a result. We would love to see what new and creative ways you come up with to use the CTA in your cover image, so if you try it out be sure to post a link to your page in the comments section so we can see what you came up with. You never know….we might just ask to feature your business in one of our future blog posts!